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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 23, 2016 - 08:48pm PT
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Target rich environment here . . .
When I go to class, my intentions are vague, I suit-up and show up (I look at some notes), and I open myself up to an uncertain and unpredictable dynamic environment (40-50 students who know I am there to challenge them). Viola: a multi-dimensional “dance” emerges (MikeL)
Damn, you're having all the fun! If I had known this I would have become a business prof. I wonder if this approach might have worked in calculus? The "dance" part sounds weirdly wonderful.
Depends what Nobel scientists you are reading about. The effect of an observer is nothing new in physics - the fathers of quantum mechanics themselves debated the role of the observer for decades: Planck, Pauli, Heisenberg and others believed that it was the observer . . . (JL)
Thank you for reminding me of this. It had completely skipped my mind.
I had a prof in grad school (himself a math dude) who ranted on and on about this . . . An "external" reality, if it existed, would by definition have to exist in space. But this is meaningless (JL)
Please tell me this is not so. Please tell me he was not a mathematician. Please tell me you did not accept his argument. Please tell me he was instead a psychologist or philosopher who was obsessed with "0".
I bet this prof is one of the creators of the Meta Mind Project.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 24, 2016 - 06:31am PT
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Jgill: I wonder if this approach might have worked in calculus?
Just how curious are you?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 24, 2016 - 10:17am PT
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One can say, well, the story is reducible to the marks on the page, which sources the story. But in fact that fails to recognize the consciousness that originally cooked up the black marks which were drawn from experience.
one has to consider the consciousness of the reader too, (isn't this a part of the deconstruction canon?).
When reading the article, who/what-ever wrote it the reader plays an important role in creating the "story". Now as Paul (and I think Largo) would complain, if you were "tricked" into believing a human wrote an article (or you just made that assumption, since, as Largo opines above, machines can't write articles) and it was actually a machine, you chalk it up to your inattention to detail.
That is, you believe that if you examined the article closely enough, it would reveal the nature of the author.
This is a point I'm trying to make, the finiteness of our ability to apply our criteria, in this case to determine whether or not a human or a machine wrote the piece. It is in the spirit of the Turing Test, but we actually use this test (with much less strict criteria) when deciding that other people (or other living things) have consciousness.
Machines write quite a lot these days, and they have access to a huge body of work by human authors. And while that may be considered "unfair," (the ability for the machines to derive from that work styles that sound human), it is exactly what sycorax teaches and Largo learned as the craft of writing, that is, studying different authors and understanding their work. I suspect that the machines may be superior to many of sycorax's students.
We can object that machines aren't up to human creativity, but that is coming with techniques like Bayesian inferencing applied to machine learning.
And machines can design and build other machines, and turn their own switches on...
However, all that is a distraction to my original point, which was that the meaning of the story comes from the arrangement of those physical symbols on the physical pages of the book. The story comes from that physical representation as interpreted by the reader, independent of how they were written, for instance, by a human author or a machine author.
The argument here is how does this undeniably physical medium produce the story? Is the story physical, or is it unphysical?
An object?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 24, 2016 - 10:28am PT
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Another crucial factor is to recognize that if a machine was to write a story, it wouldn't be doing so from a first person, experiential conscious perspective because so far as we can tell, machines don't have an interior or experiential life.
I don't think you can make that assertion... that "as far as we can tell..." because of precisely the difficulty in then claiming you know how other humans "have an interior or experiential life."
And machines write more and more stories, and are undetectable by the humans reading them...
Kenny O'Brien did his best to change the outcome, but the sophomore couldn't will George Washington past Virginia as the Colonials lost 2-0 at Davenport Field on Tuesday.
Kenny O'Brien gave the Cavaliers fits on the mound. Virginia managed just three hits off of the Colonials' pitcher, who allowed no earned runs, walked two and struck out one during his four innings of work.
Twenty-seven Colonials came to the plate and the Virginia pitcher vanquished them all, pitching a perfect game. He struck out 10 batters while recording his momentous feat. W. Roberts got Ryan Thomas to ground out for the final out of the game.
Tom Gately couldn't get it done on the rubber for George Washington, taking a loss. He went three innings, walked two, struck out one, and allowed two runs.
The Cavaliers went up for good in the fourth, scoring two runs on a fielder's choice and a balk.
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Ed, you have given a perfect example for me to riff on and make a simple point.
I have said all along that the Turning test is nothing more than a data vehicle, that a Turning machine, whatever that would look like, would simply be doing data processing and presenting it in a presentational style for which it was programmed, mimicking a human being.
Several key things to recognize here. First, what you have in your "story" examples above are not stories (experiential) but data (journalism). A story or a narrative or literature is something entirely different because it first involves (mostly but not always) the SUPRESSION of data in the service of related personal experience (Hemmingway wrote out that "rule" in the 30s). Second, the experiential angle relates not only impressions and feelings and thoughts and all that stuff we draw but being alive in time and space, it also draws from the experience of being conscious, not something you can ever "prove" from a 3rd person perspective because there is no "thing" about consciousness you can see because consciousness is not a 3rd person or external item. It does not exist in this way.
The task with a machine to write stories would be to have it forgo writing in the 3rd person omniscient about external things like games, and to write about the experience of being at a ballpark, sitting in the stands and being present with the crowd and it's own interal life - WITHOUT cutting and pasting in any way the words of what others have written about being in such places. In other words, it cannot violate the first rule of honest writing: It cannot plagiarize the words and experiences of others and present a pastiche sourced the experiences of others. And it has to supress relating data so far as it can.
Also worth noting here is that it is conceivable that one could input all the experiential writing ever written into a supercomputer which could then output some pastiche version of a story based on other people's experiences. But even if this external product (the story on a page) could pass as the work of a conscious person, it is still sourced not from an internal consciousness but from an external data bank. The machine would thereby only be replicating or faking what it does not actually have: conscious experience.
My take on this is that in some minds, if a machine can fake or replicate what it does not have to the extent that it can fool an external observer, then in some way the fake is just as valid and genuine as the real McCoy. The pity here is that the value is placed on the data of a lie, as opposed to the value of what is real. That is, the illusion of having experience is given equal value to having the experience itself, and ultimately, a certain mind could believe that so long as the data was in keeping with the actual experience, the illusion and the real deal are selfsame.
Take for example a person who has read every word ever written about climbing El Capitan, has downloaded into his brainpan all the scenarios and feeling and rants about sunsets and being scared shitless and the transcendent moments on bivys and so forth. He's literally read tens of thousands of these trip reports and topos and all the rest and has a flawless take on other people's experience. So he decides to sit down and write a faux first person account of climbing El Cap. And he does so in a way so convincing that he fools every person who has ever logged onto Supertopo. Then it comes out that the writer never actually climbed the Captain, he only said he did.
How would people react? First the writer would be accused of being a fraud. He reported an event that never happened. Second, we would feel sorry for the poor guy because perhaps he thought that faking the climb was every bit as good as doing the climb itself, so long as he got the data right. Why might we feel sorry for anyone doing that? Because anyone who has actually done a climb knows that no matter how much data one reads about or even writes about climbing is small beer compared to consciously climbing and having the experience of climbing.
I have to work now and shouldn't have taken the time to even do this but my point is that no matter how well a machine can fake having experience, it is no substitute for experience itself, and just because a person or a machine can fool readers that actually climbed El Cap (and had a conscious experience of doing so) does not mean that in the real world it actually "did the climb."
Bottom line, data is never the proof of experience, nor is it the equal to or substitute for same. At least not in my book.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Jun 24, 2016 - 10:29am PT
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I say both, just as the critique of a piece of writing or a painting often reveals interpretations which the author had not thought of or ever intended for it to mean.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jun 24, 2016 - 11:09am PT
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Sometimes this stuff goes right over the top of Base104's head. (Knee-jerk reaction)
Fine. You can diss me all that you like. I know that the best moments of my life are when I help someone else. Especially with a guy like me, who spends 12 hours a day, alone, working complex geophysical data in front of an array of giant monitors. I'm not typing this on my f'ing cell phone. I post here while my software is working a problem. To be honest, I don't think it is healthy to get sucked into the void that is the internet, and the main posters on this thread have the time to read every post. I don't. I just try to interject when I see something wrong. I try to talk sense into people who are hell bent on senselessness. No-thing is a very personal project. Is it selfish? Answer that.
When I go out, or have a meeting downtown, I always see others who are in need. On Mondays and Thursday evenings I go to a group, where I can help others because I've been where they are now. Those moments are the ones that are most real to me.
Saying that you can't help others until you've got yourself squared away is baloney. I'll probably never get myself squared away by the standards of religion or many of you people.
What I do like about religion is some of the moral lessons. Some are BS, but some are deeply true. That's why I spend some of my free time reading about religion. Religion is a construct to keep people in line. Another form of control. I refute that control, absolutely. It doesn't mean that everything in the Bible is bullsh#t. There are some wonderful lessons in the Bible, that anyone can take away.
I urge all of you to help others. There are different types of suffering out there. Werner physically saves lives, but does he recognize the every day suffering that goes on around him? Does he forgive people for their weaknesses? If you go around thinking you are riding the white horse, you are sadly mistaken. We are all weak, and we all have baggage. Just ignore it for a little while and look around you. Don't look in. That path is vanity.
I just know that the more I get into this, the more I lose the ability to judge people, and by that I mean to judge them as people. I just can't do it anymore. I know that I won the vaginal lottery. Everything went right with me. Sure, I've worked hard to get where I am, but I had a lot of opportunities that other people in the world can't even imagine. It comes down to the fact that I can no longer judge others, especially the least of us.
Jesus did say, What ye do for the least of them, ye do for me. A beautiful statement. I'm not religious, but I can learn things from the texts. Buddha said that all life is suffering. Even people with tons of money can fall. I know a guy who is stinking rich from inherited oil wealth. He goes to AA meetings and helps others. That is a good example.
So do what you can. Simple gestures mean a lot. Don't judge the beggar. Don't think to yourself that he is lazy and undeserving, or that he should just get a job. Don't think anything. Just be thankful that you are there when that person holds their hand out, and that you can do a good deed.
This is the same thing as Karma. A concept many of you know about. I'm not a believer. I think that when we die we turn completely to dust. No soul. But in our lives, we have the capacity to do good. So go out and forgive someone for their weakness. You can forgive the biggest jerk on Earth if you adopt this mindset.
This has nothing to do with mind. It has little to do with religion, although I know a super religious guy, a fervent Baptist. They found out that there was a homeless encampment in the woods along the river. They got together and bought a boatload of stuff (food, stoves, fuel, blankets) and hoofed it through the trees to give to those people. They may have pressed a few bibles into their hands, but their love was not conditional. It was real, and I respect that guy so much for that. THAT is behavior that should be rewarded.
There are always things to do. I have a friend who had a massive stroke and is hampered on his left side. He can walk with a 4 pronged cane, but only barely. He can't really speak, despite years of speech therapy, and he is extremely frustrated. I can sense his hopelessness. I can barely understand his speech, but he is still all there in his mind. He just can't find words for thoughts anymore, which is called aphasia. Strokes and aphasia has now hit two of my friends. I see them more than anyone. When you get sick and can't be social anymore, people desert you. Don't desert those people. They are in need of simple friendship. An act that is very simple, yet means so much to these folks.
After his stroke, this one guy, who was very outgoing and super cool, has slowly been forgotten by his friends who have their own lives. I'm headed out right now to walk over to his house to hang with him. His wife has told me that it does him a lot of good, because this very active guy is now reduced to watching TV all day. I converse with him, although it is difficult. I know that it means a lot to him, so I go over to hang with him. He is great on fixing things..anything. So I ask him to help me out. That helps him feel like he still has a purpose.
A very simple gesture of friendship, which helps a guy out. You don't have to be enlightened to just do that. Everyone knows people who have fallen by the wayside. Reach out to those people to let them know that they aren't as alone as they feel.
Doing good is also good for you. That I can promise. I give street people what I have in my wallet. Sometimes it is 3 bucks. Sometimes it is a hundred. I always feel good when faced with this. Thousands of people walk right by these humans like they do not exist. Politicians don't want to help them because they are apparently lazy. Dudes. That is judgment. Free yourself from judgment and the whole world opens up to you. Only the truly evil are to be shunned. A simple person in need is most likely a person who fell off of the train of life. I just can't put blame on them.
Yeah, I am harsh on Largo, but Largo is doing quite well, I know. If he has any needs, I don't know about them. If he did, I would be willing to help him just like anyone else.
We are a social species that is also sentient. We aren't ants, who eat their soldiers after they get injured. We have the capacity to do good, and charity is one area of good that is very personal, and very rewarding.
That's it.
I'm not talking about a theory of mind or any of that crap. I'm talking about helping people, usually in very simple ways. I don't means test beggars.
That is the most important thing in my life. It isn't trying to get rich anymore. It is recognizing my own humility and not placing yourself above others. It is very simple and highly rewarding. How to do more is always in my mind.
Yeah this is off topic, but I don't care. This is something that I feel very strongly about. If you get all tied up in religion or yourself, you become blind to the suffering around you. That isn't good.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jun 24, 2016 - 11:42am PT
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Preacher man's gotta preach.
DMT, that hurt.
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WBraun
climber
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Jun 24, 2016 - 11:59am PT
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Relax Mark.
We love you, and you're too sensitive at times.
Tons of sh!t goes over my head too, whatever stoopid head I have anyways.
Some daze we should BASE ... I'll jump with my butt bag as canopy and you with your rigg.
We'll see who gets to the ground first.
and DMT is just a rascal, he's good people though, he rascals me all time too, lol.
Relax duuuudddde ....... ;-)
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jun 24, 2016 - 12:23pm PT
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Base " No-thing is a very personal project. Is it selfish? Answer that."
This statement/question exposes you as a speculator; no problem, it just exposes that ie if you were a climber you would be confusing what an off-width was and face climbing.
"No-thing" is "no small craving greedy I"; "no selfish I" only "big I" the one that is not distracted and not afraid of the poor and the sick and the unknown. So it is the opposite of selfish.
I often notice how many times you use I in your posts; "I believe this, I think this" etc. "I help the poor, I interpret wells logs" etc.. a lot of information about I. You are very open that way. But is that really you? or just a narrative or story about you, a definition of you, an interpretation. Are we our jobs and or our beliefs?
In the "no-thing" experience all those identities fall way into the back ground and you become one with the moment. It is like the TV is suddenly turned off and you hear the birds outside and you are present. Not distracted by your beliefs and definitions of your self.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 24, 2016 - 12:50pm PT
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However, all that is a distraction to my original point, which was that the meaning of the story comes from the arrangement of those physical symbols on the physical pages of the book. The story comes from that physical representation as interpreted by the reader, independent of how they were written, for instance, by a human author or a machine author.
The argument here is how does this undeniably physical medium produce the story? Is the story physical, or is it unphysical?
Ed, I have never seen someone struggle so hard to warp reality into a form that is consistent with your philosophical position asking, "What isn't physical?" It's like fashioning the universe so the Earth is in the middle - you can do it, but the process sure is wonky.
Meaning, in literature, is not derived from the physical arrangement of marks on a page. Those marks don't mean anything without a mind to process them, and all that working is still only machine data till a consciousness becomes aware of same.
The story is the experiential interface between the marks on the page and a conscious observer. Not till a conscious observer chooses to read a story does it become anymore more than physical marks on a page. And that "more" is an experience. Is that more a physical object?
You're trying to posit the story as a mind-independent property or object belonging entirely to the physical marks on the page. Alone, they have no meaning, no story content or reality. They are totally undifferentiated, neither wave nor particle, so to speak. Only a conscious observer can produce a story, and that process happens not to the marks on the page, but to the observer. I think the turd in the punchbowl, so to speak, is this compulsion to try and consider parts of the process as mind-independent.
An interesting thought experiment would be to imagine what kind of literary (experiential) stories AI machines would tell themselves, if instructed to refrain from imparting data about externals so far as they could, and to concentrate on their internal experience, since we all know that experience only comes in the first person form.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 24, 2016 - 01:56pm PT
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An interesting thought experiment would be to imagine what kind of literary (experiential) stories AI machines would tell themselves, if instructed to refrain from imparting data about externals so far as they could, and to concentrate on their internal experience, since we all know that experience only comes in the first person form.
go to the Utilities folder on your Mac and click "Console"
you have an equally insistent point of view which is that the paper means nothing...
perhaps you should think again, without your books, you haven't written anything.
Now how is it that a machine can take those words and craft a story from them?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 24, 2016 - 02:07pm PT
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Just how curious are you? (MikeL)
Not very. I left teaching behind sixteen years ago. Regarding calculus, over twenty years ago my department attempted to integrate computers with the subject, but the software at the time was not user-friendly. I don't know if computer work is integrated into calculus courses these days - I haven't stayed abreast. Actually, the programming would have been of value to illustrate the concepts, but if computers are used now all that has been done for the student.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 24, 2016 - 03:14pm PT
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DMT, there appears to be more than a few things about which you and I resonate. Cheers.
Werner and PSP: +1
Base:
I mean to be friendly. We’re just talking, but I understand how certain ideas or points of view might be offensive. (It’s almost always somewhat of a rough crowd in here.)
(Jgill, thanks.)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 24, 2016 - 05:48pm PT
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As much as I respect your point of view and vast knowledge in science etc, I almost feel sorry for you on this one, Ed. And no disrespect intended. Actually, nothing could be more in my wheelhouse then contrasting literature with mind.
You quoted me saying:
An interesting thought experiment would be to imagine what kind of literary (experiential) stories AI machines would tell themselves, if instructed to refrain from imparting data about externals so far as they could, and to concentrate on their internal experience, since we all know that experience only comes in the first person form.
And you instructed: go to the Utilities folder on your Mac and click "Console"
Now Ed, I have a Mac, and I am aware that Console is a log viewer, part of my OS, and it lets me search through stored messages, and signals the machine when certain types of messages are logged. Now what you have done here is shifted attention from externals, as I suggested, and gone to internal content that is logged strictly in the form of data. So you've gone from external to internal, which is half way home, but the next injunction, what Hemmingway said, that a story represses data and relates experience - that part the machine cannot do because it doesn't have experience.
What you are missing here, I believe, is that data and experience are not self-same.
Look at the definition of the noun, data ~ "facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis." So the content is basically facts, figures, statistics, details, etc.
In computing, we have ~ "the quantities, characters, or symbols on which operations are performed by a computer, being stored and transmitted in the form of electrical signals and recorded on magnetic, optical, or mechanical recording media."
In philosophy, your definition per data is ~ things known or assumed as facts, making the basis of reasoning or calculation.
Now Ed, the thing I want to make clear here is that this "data" is exactly the stuff Hemmingway was saying to repress in order to do literature - and the very stuff you need to do science. Instead of relating what any computer can do mechanically per QUANTITIES of objects and things, literature as found in stories is all about the QUALITIES of experience AS experienced from a first person perspective.
While it is true that in some sense we objectify those qualities when we transmute them into story language, but the language, nor yet the marks on the page, are the real story. The story is entirely the result of a magic show known in psychology as "projecting."
When reading a story, we are active participants. We project our experiential life onto the story and in this way the story comes alive in us. More on this in a minute. But it is worth mentioning here that the reason a machine is not capable of grasping the essence or meaning or meat and potatoes of a story is that it doesn't have the requisite internal experience to project onto the marks on the page. It can only crunch qualitative data.
Qualitative phenomenon, including being conscious of having same ("what it is like to BE Ed") - the core of experience - is lost on a machine. Entirely.
Then you said; You an equally insistent point of view which is that the paper means nothing...
perhaps you should think again, without your books, you haven't written anything.
What I actually said was NOT that the paper IS nothing, but rather: "The story is the experiential interface between the marks on the page and a conscious observer."
Now what do I actually mean by that. What I mean is that when a conscious observer reads a story, he or she projects their own conscious experience, real (past) and imagined (present) onto the happenings as described in the story. The deeper experience we have to project, the deeper the story means and is experienced in the reader.
For example, if I am describing being with a beautiful and comely and winsome and randy girl, and the male reader grew up in a closet, the experiential quotient won't be much. But to a properly-formed male who is not drunk or jaded, that girl is almost a live creature if I've done my work right.
Same thing with describing a climb or a work or art or a song or a sunset. The more direct personal, qualitative experience a person has to project on the sunset or the song, the greater the experience and meaning of the story. The reader is not a passive receiver of a story existing on the page.
A common misconception is that the black marks on a page "evoke" a story, as though they, the objects on the page, were the efficient cause. That take couldn't be further from the truth, because it possibly implies that the efficacy of the story is inherent in the black marks. That's like saying music lives inside an electric guitar, when in fact music is what happens when a person PLAYS the guitar - or at least when, say, Stevie Ray Vaughn plays it because the qualitative aspects of his playing are so much different than my own.
In this sense, a story is what a conscious observer does when he plays the black marks on the page with his own capacity for first person experience, projecting same on the imagined scenario. While it is true that the black marks are a crucial part of relating a story in the third person, just as a CD or an MP file is in relating music, these maps, so to speak, are not the qualitative territory that is is covered for the simple reason that an objective representation of experience in the written language is not experience itself.
But even the word "qualitative" presents an erroneous picture here because most definitions simply can't avoid the idea of measuring, i.e. "qualitative: relating to, measuring, or measured by the quality of something rather than its quantity." And "quality" is also described as "the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind."
Of course we can see that these are inadequate representations of experience because they have to fall back on the quantity or contrasting of what ("quality") they cannot actually objectify, hence the need to self-reference and say nothing other than the qualitative is the degree of the quality inherent in ... blah blah blah. In the world of objects, what a thing does is the end of the story. With experience, it is all about what your life IS in experiential form.
A story then is the act of putting words to what does not exist as a quantity save through analysis. True, we can say, "That girls is a 10," but the metric is subjective. We can work up a criteria per what most people feel are the attributes that constitute a 10, but those will vary culture to culture, and they are based not on a mind-independent objective thing or a quantification of that object, but rather on matters of taste. And as the saying goes: Tastes differ.
Lastly, Ed said: "Now how is it that a machine can take those words and craft a story from them?"
A machine cannot craft a story from those marks because it doesn't have a subjective life to project onto the marks. A machine can only look at the marks as quantitative data. Just hit CONSOLE and ask...
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 24, 2016 - 06:25pm PT
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While it is true that the black marks are a crucial part of relating a story in the third person, just as a CD or an MP file is in relating music, these maps, so to speak, are not the qualitative territory that is is covered for the simple reason that an objective representation of experience in the written language is not experience itself.
Not the same experience, but experience nonetheless. In your words:
if I am describing being with a beautiful and comely and winsome and randy girl, and the male reader grew up in a closet, the experiential quotient won't be much. But to a properly-formed male who is not drunk or jaded, that girl is almost a live creature if I've done my work right.
As one would expect, according to the memories, associations, and other biology in the reader. No need for non-physical explanations. How is it different from the dog salivating to a ringing bell after having connected it with food?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 24, 2016 - 07:08pm PT
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Not the same experience, but experience nonetheless. In your words:
if I am describing being with a beautiful and comely and winsome and randy girl, and the male reader grew up in a closet, the experiential quotient won't be much. But to a properly-formed male who is not drunk or jaded, that girl is almost a live creature if I've done my work right.
As one would expect, according to the memories, associations, and other biology in the reader. No need for non-physical explanations. How is it different from the dog salivating to a ringing bell after having connected it with food?
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You're floundering with this one, MH2, simply by hugging the tree of materialism with all your waning might.
In the first instance quoted about, explain to the world how the map (the CD or marks on a page) is "experience." Who is experiencing what? How is the external top the internal experience of doing the route? Can yo utell the difference?
In the second example you are trying to source the experience to some manner of programming (and also the the CONTENT of consciousness), but you are left in the cul-du-sac of once more leaving out consciousness, or conflating BEING conscious with programming. What's more, you've returned, like an ant to a hole, of looking at the outward or external action of the boy with a hard on or dog salivating with the internal experience going on.
As mentioned, this stubborn insistence to always hark back to the data and the object, and trying your hardest to conceive it all as "mind-independent" is the "turd in the punch bowl."
What's more, an "explanation" can only refer to the mechanistic aspects of an object, or a representational model of experience because explanations are always quantitative and typically in reference to what some thing or some being does. Actions that we can observe. Per the interior life you duffers keep on trying to dodge, understand that these "explanations" or material investigations don't apply to internal reality itself, which is a qualitative, NOT a qualitative phenomenon.
Explanations are about causality, and will only tell you about objective functioning. To dive off the cliff and say that unless you can measure experience, it is not real, presupposes that external and internal phenomenon are selfsame, when in fact you are not even looking at internal phenomenon with that yardstick. You're looking at external phenomenon and projecting your consciousness onto it - so quite naturally will will see "it" exactly where you are looking.
If you want to see many of these issues played out on the big screen, watch The Machine, a fine British production from a few years ago.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 24, 2016 - 09:36pm PT
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What you are missing here, I believe, is that data and experience are not self-same (JL)
This is a point that bears repeating.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 25, 2016 - 08:07am PT
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hugging the tree of materialism
There are many ways to look at a thing, JL. None of them will satisfy everyone.
We on this thread are cheese novices with not much ability to discriminate the flavours.
From a connoisseur:
Simplicus says, "I am enjoying this tree."
Then various philosophers, a Cartesian, an idealist, an idealistic mystic, a realistic mystic, a couple logical positivists, a couple physicists, a christian theologian, a psychiatrist, some epistemologists, a rabbi, three meanys, two moralists, three Zen masters, and a Zen student discuss what is happening as Simplicus is enjoying the tree.
They do not agree.
The realistic mystic:
I start from the premise that reality is purely material. All that exists is the material universe, which for certain purposes might be broken down into material particles and their motions. Simplicus's enjoyment of the tree is therefore indeed an event or set of events in the nervous system of the body of Simplicus. This viewpoint, though correct, seems to me only partial. Simplicus is not a closed physical system. When Simplicus has a thought, the particles of the cerebrum of Simplicus move not only in relation to each other but also in relation to all the other particles of the universe. I therefore wish to look upon the thoughts of Simplicus as an activity of the universe as a whole.
The idealist:
...the evidence for what you call the material counterpart of this mental process is, as I have demonstrated, inconclusive. I don't believe in the existence of this tree. The proper way to phrase it, therefore, is that the mind of Simplicus is enjoying his idea of the tree.
For myself, I do not insist on anyone agreeing with my point of view, even if they were able to figure out what it is.
excerpts from
5,000 B.C.and other Philosophical Fantasies
Raymond Smullyan
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 25, 2016 - 10:15am PT
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What you are missing here, I believe, is that data and experience are not self-same (JL)
Yes, and no matter how complex the data recorder or system, experience doesn't come into play unless you define data and a reaction to it as experience. Problem is the big question is exactly that point of experience lying between data and reaction. A point sorely lacking in machines.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Jun 25, 2016 - 01:51pm PT
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I check in every once in a while to see the status of the answer that is a building.
It's interesting that this dialogue is completely limited by language and the conceptual apparatus it provides (I'd include mathematics and computation).
Nothing new under the sun, or above it for that matter?
What is purple? What is purple haze?
Purple is a color, right?
What is color?
Turtles all the way down.
Jimi knows what purple haze is, but he is dead and he is not saying? Or is he?
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